CHAPTER FOUR

  The Finger and the Stinger

  I

  Ez nocked an arrow and crouched low to get a better angle.

  “Aim for the eyes!” Gramma hollered. “That’s their weak—” a deafening crash obliterated the rest of the sentence. Sighting up the shaft of the arrow, Ez watched as fissures spiderwebbed the ceiling. Icy sweat trickled down her spine. If the entire roof collapsed, the battle would be brief indeed; she, Gramma and Thoralf would be crushed before they could inflict a single casualty. Down in the cellar, Wilburn would survive only for as long as it took the vexpids to clear the debris and penetrate the titanium. However, quite the opposite occurred. With a terrible groaning riiiiiiip, the roof peeled back from the rafters like the rind of a grapefruit, leaving the skeletal frame open to the night and to the swarm of hornets thrumming in the darkness.

  A wave of fruitily rotten, rancid meat stench smashed into Ez's lungs. She gagged, and might have vomited under less dire circumstances—but there simply wasn’t time. The moment she spotted a glint of lamplight in a compound eye, she drew and released and was already reaching to her quiver when the arrow found its mark. Twenty arrows, twenty shots. She took them in rapid succession, knowing the bow would be worthless when the distance closed. Nock—draw—loose—nock—draw—loose—She entered a state of mind where time seemed to slow down, and yet jerk past in disjointed fragments of hyper-clarity.

  —nock—

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  A buzzing mass of hornets clogged the rafters; she picked one at random.

  —draw—

  She could see every glittering bead in its eye.

  —loose—

  The arrow buried itself to the fletching as she nocked another, heedless of the lightning streaking past her from the tip of Gramma’s cane and of the the hornets falling smoking to the floor. Green ichor sprayed as Thoralf kicked vexpids to pieces, drenching Ez, though she paid it no mind. The slaughtered insects began to pile up in heaps, shrinking the diminutive room further. Such tight quarters meant the hornets couldn’t fly, but their overwhelming numbers more than made up for this minor inconvenience. They poured on and on into the cottage like a volcanic eruption in reverse. For each one killed, two more came scuttling after it with twitchy, too-fast movements.

  Nock—draw—loose—nock—draw—loose—Ez reached for another arrow—and her fingers closed on air.

  Tossing the bow aside, she seized her axe and sprang out of her crouch with an upward slash, carving a deep gouge in a hornet’s underbelly. She pivoted, yanking the axe free, and swung it sidelong, chopping another’s leg off as it dropped down from the rafters. She might have been screaming. Her emotions were a paradox of abject terror and something akin to euphoria. An ancient animal had risen up within her and was fully in control, while the part of her mind that normally made decisions sat back quietly in awe.

  The vexpids ceased to be individuals to her. Ez fought a single, multi-headed monster that seemed to heal instantaneously, sprouting new limbs faster than she could hack them off. All was a spinning dance of chaos. The vexpids demolished sections of the walls and flooded in from all directions. Flames leapt where the oil lamps had spilled, throwing hot light and writhing shadows everywhere. Ez stumbled. She was buffeted and bludgeoned. She was hurled to the ground. She managed to roll just in time. A stinger, gleaming crimson in the firelight, plunged deep into the floor next to her cheek. The wood at the injection site melted like wax, and even through the miasma, Ez caught a dizzying whiff of something toxic—an acrid, sulfuric stink. Somehow, she regained her feet. Somehow, she kept fighting.